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It would be great if we had a continent wide grid that could efficiently transfer energy from one region to another, but we don't. Building one would be enormo
by treis 9y ago
It would be great if we had a continent wide grid that could efficiently transfer energy from one region to another, but we don't. Building one would be enormously expensive and we'd lose a lot of power in transit.
- disconnected 9y agoWouldn't it be great if such a thing existed? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_synchronous_grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_synchronous_grid
- treis 9y agoThere's nowhere near enough capacity to transmit enough solar power from say Florida to power the Northeast. Besides, then you still run into problem 2. Florida has to have enough excess capacity to support the NE. And enough excess to make up for summer vs winter.
- sametmax 9y agoYou don't need that. A grid at the country scale is enough. Power is less consumed during the night, so using only wind by night is alright. Plus we already have "grid-contract" with neighbors in France to load balance. And even the biggest defenders of solar and wind don't advocate for going 100% at first. Mixing sources and increasing solar / wind gradually years and years is already nice.